Archive for the 'Camera Stuff' Category(IMAGE: Schweeeeet!) A bad photo of my new multiple-monitor goodness I found myself suddenly lusting for a second monitor (Lightroom 2 supports two monitors), and with visions of a tax writeoff dancing in my head, I opted for the mid-level Eizo FlexScan SX2461W, a 24" widescreen that offers a 1,920 × 1,200 desktop in luscious relatively-wide-gamut color. (If I'd had visions of hitting the lottery dancing in my head, I'd have gone for the $6,000 Eizo ColorEdge CG221) I had trouble setting up my XP box for dual monitors until I installed the latest drivers for my ATI graphics card — ATI's new “Catalyst Control Center” made it [...] 
View full post » I've just posted new versions of my Lightroom export plugins ( Zenfolio · SmugMug · Flickr · Picasa Web ) that include a new “Run Any Command” piglet. This piglet – for technically-savvy users – allows you to run any command on each exported image before it's uploaded: The piglet comes with my plugins, but it can also be used with any plugin that uses my piglet plugin-addon infrastructure. Details on the piglet, along with an example of it applying exiftool to each image, is on the Run-Any-Command Piglet's page. A few warnings about today's plugin updates: There were a number of behind-the-scenes infrastructure changes in these updates, so there may be some [...] 
View full post » The four export plugins for Adobe Lightroom that I've written – for uploading to Zenfolio, SmugMug, Flickr, and Picasa Web – are useful, I hope, and offer lots of options and ways for the user to configure how their images are processed. If I had more time and more skill, though, the plugins could do more. So much more. For example, Tim Armes' LR/Mogrify Lightroom Export Plugin offers a lot of nice features that I wish my plugins offered, including: the ability to add watermark overlays (both text and images) the ability to add borders around images the ability to apply output sharpening [...] 
View full post » Alexander Kiel's has developed some insight into the “FormatMessageW failed” error that plagues some Windows users of Lightroom export plugins, including my export plugins for Zenfolio, SmugMug, Flickr, and Picasa Web. From his reports, the problem seems to be related to IE7 and slow internet connections. He poses a potential solution, so those running into this error are encouraged to see his writeup on the subject. View full post »
(IMAGE: My Sensor Dust Reference Page)
In a recent post about silly extreme macro photography, I commented that some of the small-aperture f/22 shots weren't good for much except illustrating that I need to clean my image sensor. Just as a small light source like a flashlight casts a sharper shadow than, say, a large light source like a picture window, a small aperture lens setting highlights any dust on the camera's sensor by allowing it to cast a sharper shadow on the sensor's photosites, yielding noticeable spots in the resulting picture. Some of my silly macro shots had blotchy dust spots on them. I clean my D200 [...] View full post » When viewing a geoencoded photo – one where the location's latitude and longitude are encoded in the metadata – in Lightroom, its coordinates are displayed in the metadata panel as shown below: GPS Coordinates in Lightroom's Metadata Viewer (Well, it shows up if you're using a metadata-panel view that includes the coordinates among the items to be shown, such as “all”, but you can also use my Lightroom Metadata Viewer Preset Builder to build a customized metadata-panel view.) Clicking on the little arrow to the right of the coordinates brings up your web browser, with the location showing in Google Maps. In the case of the [...] 
View full post » I've been meaning to write about and recommend the 16" FotoSharp Camera Rain Cover I picked up last summer. It's a remarkably simple little cover that scrunches up into a tiny ball in my camera bag when not in use, yet provides rain protection even with my big Nikkor 70-200 VR zoom on my D200. The pictures on its web site pretty much show what it is, especially the 3rd one that shows it laid out flat (on top of a book, to show its transparency). It's a tube with a smallish opening on one end that goes over the lens, and a big opening on the [...] View full post » Adding to my stable of export plugins for Lightroom (Zenfolio, Smugmug and Flickr), I've just released my "Export to Picasa Web" Plugin for Lightroom. I just hacked it out and it's received minimal testing by me (and no testing by anyone else), so version churn is likely at first as bugs are reported and shaken out. It comes with a French translation for all the parts that are the same as the other plugins, but the texts unique to this plugin remain in English until the French translator is able to send an update. (If you're one of the unlucky few to get the dreaded [...] View full post » (IMAGE: Japanese Banknote at 35 × Magnification) A couple of months ago I posted about basics of reverse-lens Macro photography, where I showed some items photographed with some magnification that is considered fairly extreme by macro-photography standards. I threw around “true but misleading” big numbers like “45,000 ×” in jest, but in the normal nomenclature of macro photography where magnification is represented by the relative size of the object to its projection on the film or digital sensor, the photographs in that post were just a bit less than 3 × magnification. Pretty strong stuff. I later posted an example at 5 × magnification, making the edge [...] 
View full post » (IMAGE: Chinese Cabbage in Fumie's Kitchen) While Fumie was cooking dinner the other day, the proportions of a Chinese cabbage (hakusai – 白菜) in the kitchen caught my eye. I thought it was beautiful, so wanted to try my hand at photographing it. The difficulty in many aspects of photography – as in life – is knowing first what you want to accomplish, and then how to go about it. Unlike my earlier water-glass shots where I just copied someone else's setup, in this case, I had an immediate gut instinct about what I wanted to do, and, especially after having read Light — Science [...] 
View full post » I love my Nikon D200, but yesterday added a new woe to the “Dead Battery Syndrome” I experienced a couple of months ago: “Black Frame Syndrome” Yesterday, Kyoto was a cold and heavily overcast, with sporadic misty rain. Occasionally and all too briefly, the sun would poke out in brilliant fashion to set the foliage momentarily on fire, so on the way back from picking up Anthony at preschool, I stopped by the grounds of the old imperial palace, now mostly a big park heavily laden with fall colors at their peak. The trees were amazing, but it was dark and dull, so it wasn't too interesting [...] 
View full post » Crisp and Clear, Blazing Sunshine Every day this week I've really enjoyed each morning's trip to drop Anthony off at school, as the cornucopia of rich colors along the way are mentally enriching, spiritually uplifting. They give me yet another reason to count my blessings to be able to live where I do. And this, mind you, is while it's been a depressingly overcast and hazy week. So, consider what it was like in the brilliant and crisp sunshine that greeted Kyoto today. It was simply glorious. Words or pictures can never do it justice. Today was the epitome of a perfect autumn day at [...] 
View full post » The export plugins for Lightroom 1.3 that I mentioned here and here have now been released: Zenfolio Smugmug Flickr Unfortunately, I came down with a cold yesterday and I got word that I could release these just an hour before heading off to the doctor (I leave in 15 minutes), so I may have screwed up something in my rush to get these links out. We'll see. In any case, expect a lot of version churn at the beginning, as bugs are flushed out... View full post » UPDATE: You can now Download Here As I'm still waiting for word from Adobe that I can post my Zenfolio and SmugMug plugins (“frustrated” does not even being to explain my feelings on this matter), I've put the time to good use, developing a plugin for Flickr. To give a hint, here's what the export dialog looks like at the moment.... The SmugMug and Zenfolio plugins also got the ability to choose how the Title (Zenfolio) or Caption (SmugMug) is derived, as shown in the “Title / Description” section of this screenshot. The Lightroom Export-Plugin SDK includes a sample export-to-Flickr plugin, and although I [...] 
View full post » The instructions on this page are for Lightroom versions 1.3 through 1.4.1. For Lightroom 2.0 and Later, go here As I mentioned yesterday, Adobe has released Lightroom 1.3, which now includes support for export plugins. Yesterday I described what a plugin might look like to the user. In preparation for actually being able to release the plugins that I've written, I'll describe here how to install a plugin. A plugin consists of a folder worth of files, with the folder having a name that ends with “.lrplugin” or “.lrdevpluginin”. Installing a plugin involves simply moving the plugin folder to a place where Lightroom will find it, [...] 
View full post » Adobe has just released Version 1.3 of its Lightroom photo-workflow software, two months after releasing Version 1.2. You can download the new version from Adobe's Lightroom Page, or use these direct links: Mac · Windows. There's a ReadMe.pdf describing the release, and a much more detailed description by Victoria Bampton, but in short, it contains some small things: Better OSX Leopard support Bug fixes Support for a few new cameras: Nikon D3 & D300 Canon 1Ds Mark III & PowerShot G9 Olympus E-3 & SP-560 [...]
View full post » I published an updated to my Photoshop calendar-template-building script today. The script, which runs on Photoshop CS2 or CS3, creates the components of a calendar as a many-layered PhotoShop document that you can then change and tweak (adding photos, etc.) as you like. The upgrade is from Version 3 Beta 1 (a major upgrade released a month ago) to Version 3, and incorporates these enhancements: The “February becomes March” bug has been fixed. You can now have weeks start on any day of the month, not just Sunday or Monday as before. Apparently, a calendar starting on Saturday [...] 
View full post » Lighting a scene to photograph in a pleasing way is either a matter of luck, or the combination of two skills: knowing the physics of light (that is, knowing the results you'll get from lighting decisions), and having the creative sense to use that knowledge toward an aesthetically-pleasing end. For my part, I generally go with the “luck” option, but that's about to change. I've recently started reading Light — Science & Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting, and the first chapters have made me positively giddy with expectation. As I lamented once before, good photographers apparently make bad writers (with the most poorly written book [...] 
View full post » (IMAGE: Part of a Japanese 2,000-yen Banknoteat 650× Magnification) Well, I'm not sure “650× magnification” is exactly the right way to say it because there are so many ways to lie with numbers. The area of the bill shown is about 8mm by 5.3mm, or about 0.066 square inches. With an average LCD display at 86 DPI, the image above appears at about 8 × 5.4 inches, or about 43 square inches (although how big it appears for you depends on the physical size of your monitor, your monitor's dot pitch, your desktop size, and perhaps some browser settings). So, from the actual area of [...]
View full post » In the park with Anthony today, I brushed up against a plant that left my arm plastered with seed pods that apparently became molecularly bonded to my shirt and skin. They were exceedingly difficult to remove. When I was actually able to pry one away, it stuck just as well to my fingers. I could feel it grabbing onto my fingerprints. If I could then somehow flick it with enough force to propel it away from my finger, it would generally manage to land on my pant leg, which started the whole process over. I'm not sure I've totally eradicated them from my skin/clothes, but [...] 
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